Tag: cruise

two sides to every ship

port (left) side of the ship:

 

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starboard (right) side of the same ship:

 

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there are fewer than 2 minutes separating the photos. i’m sure there’s a metaphor hidden in there somewhere, but i’m too tired to recognize it now.

 

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tonight was a night for swapping addresses and phone numbers
and saying good-bye-but-i-promise-i’ll-stay-in-touch
with new friends.
and you know what? i think we really will.

 

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our daughter sang to us in the piano bar tonight.
seems the perfect segue as we transition
out of one week into the next.

 

lives touching lives, a thread

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“I’d like to do something meaningful with what’s left of my life,” Mother says after telling me about the book she’s just finished reading about the work author Danielle Steele does with homeless people.

“What would you like to do?” I ask her.

“Well, I know a lot of women who are lonely,” she says, “and I was thinking that if I could take them to lunch that might be something.”

[ ::: ] [ ::: ] [ ::: ]

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For twelve and a half hours beginning at 3:30 a.m. today, Thursday 11/29/12, we are either sitting still in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean or cutting doughnuts, going around and around the area where a passenger is believed to have gone overboard.

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The U.S. Coast Guard joins in the search with two cutters, a helicopter, and a fixed-wing plane, and passengers watching from aboard the ship do what people do: they make up stories about the man gone overboard. Some say he was traveling with his wife and a child, others say he was traveling only with his wife. Some say he and his wife were in marriage counseling. Some say he was extremely drunk, others say they were with him and he was upbeat. Some wonder how long he could survive, factoring in such factors as water temperature, where he entered the water in relation to the ship’s engines, and the proximity of sea life. Some are frustrated at missing the beach stop – the last chance to get their toes in the sand – originally scheduled for tomorrow; some pray for his family. A sketch of his face remains on our tv screens throughout the day while he captain comes on the intercom periodically, pleading for anybody with any information to come forward, especially the person who first reported the incident in the dark thirty hours of the morning. People spend the day glued to one side of the ship or another – some with binoculars – hoping to be the one to call out “There he is! I see him!” It’s a call nobody gets to make.

My daughter and I go see a movie late tonight – we’ve seen this movie several times, but we need the quiet and distraction. My husband fetches us cookies while we are gone.

[ ::: ] [ ::: ] [ ::: ]

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He asks to join a trivia game team, and she asks me about my stitching, where did my ideas come from, how long will it take me to finish – that kind of thing. He walks more slowly now, his back rather bent, and she gets around via a motorized scooter. Stanley Gray had just come out of the service in 1945, and when he went to a resort in New York to celebrate July 4, he asked the pretty young woman named Judith to dance.

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The following year, he asked her to marry him, and she said “Yes” – just what he was hoping she’d say. “Yesterday was our 66th wedding anniversary,” he said, standing a little bit straighter in the telling. “We’ve still got each other, and we still have fun. You can’t ask for more than that.”

[ ::: ] [ ::: ] [ ::: ]

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These threads, these rows of quilting – they’re us, walking our different paths. Some paths are long, some are short. Paths touching, paths overlapping. You just never know.

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For as long as I can remember,
blue has been my favorite color,
the color I can count on to catch my eye
and attract my attention
and hold my heart in bated breath.

 

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Today was full of blues
that left me downright gobsmacked.

 

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Mesmerized.
Lifted.

 

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I stitched on my new cloth today.
It seemed fitting.
Right.
I just can’t get the hang of
using a hoop,
and I bought some big clips
from the office supply store,
but they made it unbelievably heavy
and it clinked and clanked all the time.
So I went back to my original plan.
I fold it a certain way,
spread it across my lap and over the arms
of the chair,
and I slide an old clipboard
under it
to bounce the needle off off
as I stitch.
It works just fine.

 

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We’re almost to the end of Nancy’s Drawings, Set 1.

 

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What will I do then?
Bring them together in a cloth
Then start stitching Set 2,
of course.

 

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~~~~~~~~~

She is my developmentally disabled sister-in-law, Nancy,
and I am Jeanne, the woman who flat-out loves her.
Go here to start at the beginning.

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Sunday

a day filled with
tai chi
and a movie.
stitching.
napping,

 

Dancing

and dancing with
new friends,
wise women
who are no longer willing
to wait on a man
before taking the
dance floor.
oh the fun we had.
i think women were made
for dancing.
i really do.

 

Moon

the moon treated us
to an earlier-than-usual
appearance.

 

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and today’s drawing

(taken in the most awful lighting you can imagine)
that looks
for all the world
like a rose to me.

all in all,
i’d say that today
came out smelling like a rose.

 

~~~~~~~~~

She is my developmentally disabled sister-in-law, Nancy,
and I am Jeanne, the woman who flat-out loves her.
Go here to start at the beginning.

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Hey, Sugar! I'm Jeanne Hewell-Chambers: writer ~ stitcher ~ storyteller ~ one-woman performer ~ creator & founder of The 70273 Project, and I'm mighty glad you're here. Make yourself at home, and if you have any questions, just holler.

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